SECURITY: Tehran Promises "Unconventional Response" If Israel Attacks Iran

Roi Kais at KAN reports on X that a senior Iranian official told Al Jazeera: "We sent a message to the US through Qatar that any Israeli attack would be met with an unconventional response that would also include infrastructure. The phase of unilateral restraint is over."

• Follows comments from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian yesterday: “We don't seek war but if Israel acts against us we will respond.”
• NYT reports: "Israel seems ready to respond in a much more forceful and public way with Iran after Tehran launched its second massive missile attack on Israel this year, analysts and officials say." 
• Hagar Chemali, a former national security official in the Obama administration, said: “Netanyahu is showing much more willingness to take risks and gamble, and he's feeling very bold, because Israel has significantly weakened [Iran’s] proxies... I expect a strong response, something that is significant or achieves their own national security objectives.”
• US President Joe Biden told reporters yesterday that he would not back Israel striking Iran’s nuclear sites. However, the Biden administration appears willing to support a more muscular military response than the one that followed Iran's attack on Israel in April, provided it is calibrated below a threshold that may spark a major regional conflagration.
• The Washington Post reports: “[US] officials said Wednesday that Israeli officials have told them privately that they do not feel the need to hit back against Iran in an immediate and massive way. Yet officials in the United States and Europe fear that Israel could hit economic targets in Iran that would prompt a dangerous escalatory reaction.”